It begins with the search for hallowed ground, the exact place from which Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. In bleak November, Kent Gramm makes a pilgrimage to the most famous battleground in American history and over the course of a month transforms his search into a discovery of the meaning of Lincoln's elegy for America's identity.
For Gramm, the century that began with Lincoln's address and ended with the assassinations of the 1960s saw the destruction of the 'modern' world and with it America's sense of purpose. The book reflects on the November anniversaries of...

In his latest book, Kent Gramm examines the meaning of the Civil War experience in our lives and explores philosophical and personal aspects of the War that lie outside the scope of traditional historical study. He probes the meaning of Gettysburg, the Wilderness, and Antietam; the lives of U. S. Grant, Robert E. Lee, O. O. Howard, and Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce; and the legacy of the unknown participant, "somebody's darling," for whom the war would come to encompass all things. The Iron Brigade appears, along with its 20th-century successor, the 32nd "Red Arrow" Division. Readers of...

This ambitious Civil War novel centers on the moral dimension of the conflict as it traces a young Mississippi boy's conversion from pro-slavery Southerner to abolitionist Union soldier.

Allan Montague, born on a Mississippi plantation about twenty years before the Civil War, has grown up with slavery and considers it natural. When his father moves to Boston for business and takes the boy with him, young Allan carries a knife given to him by his cousin to use in killing abolitionists.
The first abolitionist young Allan meets in Boston is Levi Coffin, the reputed founder of the...